Do you ever wonder if Oil will last our lifetime?

[jschurchin]

“The IEA in 2005 was predicting oil supplies could rise as high as 120 million barrels per day by 2030, although it was forced to reduce this gradually to 116 million and then 105 million last year,” said the IEA source in the Guardian article, who was unwilling to be identified for fear of reprisals inside the industry. “The 120 million bpd figure always was nonsense but even today’s number is much higher than can be justified and the IEA knows this. Many inside the organization believe that maintaining oil supplies at even 90 million to 95 million bpd would be impossible but there are fears that panic could spread on the financial markets if the figures were brought down further. And the Americans fear the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to oil resources,” added the source.

The rest of the article here: http://www.financialsense.com/Market/wrapup.htm

Very enlighening.

[Richard D]

1. Every time . . .

I drive on the freeways and see tens of thousands of cars, knowing that that is just a tiny drop in the bucket of what is being used worldwide.

[customerserviceguy]

2. Yes, for two reasons

First, I'm 54, so all it's really got to go is about thirty years, and that's an affirmative for me. Second, as the price goes higher, it becomes economically more feasible to extract oil from alternative sources, such as tar sands and oil shale.

If the price realized for oil in July, 2008 had lasted for a few years, there would be all kinds of projects going forth to produce oil that would cost less than $100 a barrel to produce. But the smart money knew that the speculators were just trying to make a quick killing, and that the price level of mid-2008 wasn't sustainable.

[Dead_Parrot]

3. I hope not

It's done enough damage already. Question is, will we replace it with anything in advance or just stand around looking surprised when we can't buy any more?

[FiveGoodMen]

7. "just stand around looking surprised"

Fossil fuels are propping up the world's food production. One argument against fuel from corn is that you have to put so much oil-derived fertilizer on the fields that you might as well have just put that oil in the cars.

So...

When the oil runs out, we either have Plan B in place or else we start the massive die-off from starvation, wars, local violence, disease caused by the starvation, wars, etc...

That six billion will be dropping fast.

[Warpy]

4. Of course, but once the easy oil is gone and we're left

with oil sand, oil shale, and deep water drilling, it's going to get so expensive we'll be forced to do what we should be starting to do now: using alternative fuels wherever we can, building and using mass transit, and being a little more rational when designing our cities, eliminating sprawl.

[Raster]

5. The entities that currently control the world-wide petroleum infrastructure want to

currently limit alternative fuels and probably limit other alternative energy and transportation scenarios. It really is "follow the money."

[Jackpine Radical]

6. Oil will last.

Cheap oil will not.

[Naturyl]

8. Hopefully not.

Since people absolutely refuse to get off oil voluntarily, it will have to run out before alternatives will be taken seriously.

[Terry in Austin]

9. Short answer: No

I don't wonder.

It seems pretty obvious to me that we'll live to see something recognizable as "the end of oil" -- and I'm 62.

Yes, there will be petroleum available on some basis. Most likely as a raw material, too costly and valuable to simply burn as a fuel.

As for running the joint, though, oil's days are severely numbered.

[OKIsItJustMe]

10. Depends on what you call "lasting"…

I expect there to essentially always be oil, however it will get harder and harder to recover, and consequently more and more expensive, and therefore used less and less.

(It will asymptotically approach running out.)

[Javaman]

11. Oil will be around for a very long time...

It's a matter of there being enough.

demand is out pacing production.

The good stuff, sweet crude, is running out rapidly.

The bad stuff, sour crude, is abundant, but expensive to process, much more polluting than sweet, and is getting harder and harder to extract.

In essence, we as a world have eaten all the frosting on the cake. The cake that is left has too much salt, no sugar and no eggs. It's just flour and salty water.

Our life after the frosting is gone? Living on hardtack.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardtack

[pscot]

12. Absolutely

But then I don't have all that much lifetime left to worry about

[Nihil]

13. Wish it would happen tomorrow ...

... as it might focus a few minds on real problems rather than letting
them fritter away time by bickering over a couple of private emails ...

Just crash the fucking system now and let the dying begin so that the
ones who are causing & continuing the problem get to suffer from the
results of their actions rather than living comfortable lives and passing
the penalty on to later generations.

:mad:

[GliderGuider]

14. It may not matter that much.

When it does start to decline it's going to destabilize so many of the social systems we depend on that pricey gas could become the least of our worries.

One of my favourite quotes is from the philosopher Charles Eisenstein's book The Ascent of Humanity: "The things that must happen to avert (the converging crises of industrial civilization) will only happen as their consequence."

We will begin to work like hell only once the shit has actually reached the fan blades.